eBay chief exec John Donahoe's take-home pay has shrunk by half compared to last year, partly because the online tat-bazaar's financial performance didn't live up to expectations.

Donahoe was paid $13.8m in wages and bonuses for 2013, down 53 per cent from the whopping $29.7m he trousered for the previous year.

"The Committee concluded that while Mr. Donahoe continued to perform well against many of the goals, the Company’s financial performance for 2013 and positioning relative to its competitors at the start of 2014 did not fully meet expectations," the firm said in a filing.

That didn't mean that Donahoe didn't get any bonus, however; he ended up with 65 per cent of his target cash incentive award. Other top execs also got a slightly smaller cash bonus, including CFO Robert Swan, Devin Wenig, president of eBay Marketplaces and David Marcus, head of PayPal and CTO Mark Carges.

The main reason Donahoe's pay appears so much smaller is because 2012's pay package included a one-time award of $14.8m in performance shares. ®